[From Litha to Lammas]: Serpentwined, gen, sequel to Tread Among Serpents, 5/6, PG-13

[lomonaaeren]

“Where’s Hermione?”

Ron winced as he heard Potter’s voice behind him. Then he told himself that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t even been complaining about Granger to Granger. He’d been talking to Neville, and it was her fault if she’d eavesdropped on a private conversation.

“She, um, isn’t here.” Neville sounded like he wanted to piss himself, which was ultimately what made Ron turn back to face Potter.

“She’s not here,” he repeated. Potter just gave him a skeptical look, which made Ron angrier. “Do you think I’m lying? Do you see her?” He swept his hand up and down the line of Gryffindors walking out of Potions.

“No. Which isn’t like her. She’s never missed a class. Is she sick?”

Ron saw Malfoy and Zabini and Nott watching from behind Potter. They always seemed to be trialing him everywhere, like good little Death Eaters. Ron heard his voice become sharp without his really meaning it to. “No. Okay? You don’t need to know. The lot of you aren’t Gryffindors.”

“No, but I’m her friend, and I want to know if she’s sick.”

Potter had a quiet way of speaking that still drew attention to him and made him seem to shine in the middle of the corridor. Ron felt sick himself watching it. He could have been so important to everyone, and instead he had to be a Parselmouth.

“It doesn’t matter, Potter!”

Potter was quiet, studying Ron for a second, and then said, “I don’t think you would be so resistant to telling me unless you had something to do with it.”

What the hell? Ron had heard Percy says something once about there being wizards and witches who could read people’s thoughts, but this was beyond anything he’d ever heard of.

“She’s in a b-bathroom somewhere upstairs,” Neville said.

“Neville!” Ron stared at him in betrayal.

“What’s she doing there?” Potter gave Ron a single slashing glance that he could feel making his face burn, and then focused on Neville instead.

“Ron s-said a couple of things about her, and she ran away. The things weren’t very n-nice.” Neville flushed hard as he saw all the Slytherins staring at him, but he put up his head and continued facing then. “P-Parvati Patil in Gryffindor said that she was crying in the bathroom and wanted to be left alone.”

Potter was quiet for a long second, again. Ron hoped that he would just turn around and walk away, but instead, Potter faced Ron and looked at him hard.

“You’ve made the girl who never misses a class miss it,” Potter said, his voice rich with scorn. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“You’re not in a House with her!” Ron exclaimed, stung, even though he was also telling himself that Potter was an evil Parselmouth and it shouldn’t sting so much. “You don’t know how much she goes on and on and bursts into conversations and keeps offering help even when no one needs help!”

“I wish she was in Slytherin. We would have treated her better than you do.”

“Slytherin, with its blood prejudice?” Ron did have to laugh. “With people who call Muggleborns nasty names?”

He noticed that Malfoy was shifting in place with his eyes down, and started to say something. But Potter stole his breath by just shaking his head and speaking in a voice that seemed to ring from the walls.

“I won’t deny there’s blood prejudice in Slytherin. But there’s stupid prejudice in Gryffindor. Hermione can stand up and fight back against blood prejudice, and I can support her doing it. But she can’t fight back against pressure from Gryffindors who just resent her for the person she is.”

He turned and walked away. The other Slytherins started and then scrambled along behind him. Both Nott and Zabini sneered at Ron.

Ron could feel himself turning even redder. He looked at Neville, who was pale again.

“How was I supposed to know that mocking her would make her run away?” Ron demanded.

“I don’t know.” Neville squared his shoulders. “Why did you mock her in the first place?”

It seemed stupid, now, that Ron had got upset about Granger getting the Levitation Charm first. Why would it matter? But he knew that he’d been upset at the time, and even if Neville had the right to tell him off, that didn’t give Potter the right.

I hope he doesn’t find her, Ron thought with what he knew was spite, and marched away down the corridor.

*

Minerva frowned a little as she came around the corner and discovered four of the first-year Slytherins, including Harry, heading upstairs as if they had a mission. Since their common room was in the dungeon, they had no reason to be in this part of the school. She didn’t want to think that Harry would try to find the Gryffindor common room and prank people in it, but the others might, and Harry could be led astray by bad influences.

“Mr. Potter?”

“Hello, Professor McGonagall.”

Harry had paused in the middle of the staircase when Minerva spoke to him, and stood there now, looking up. He didn’t seem like someone on the way to prank Gryffindors, but he also didn’t look as if he were about to turn around and head downstairs, either.

With effort, Minerva kept her voice light. “Shouldn’t you be on your way to the Halloween feast?”

“A friend of mine has been crying in a bathroom upstairs all day, Professor. We want to make sure she’s okay.”

“A friend of yours?”

Harry didn’t react in the insulted, muttering way that the other Slytherins did. He just nodded. “Yes, Professor. Hermione Granger. I believe she’s in your House?”

“What did you do to her?”

Harry gave her a calm glance. Then he said, “Not one of us, but one of the Gryffindors. Ron Weasley, who has a problem with me for some reason, and also with Hermione. He said some nasty things about her, and she ran away. She’s upset enough that she missed class.”

Minerva blinked. She had noticed Granger’s absence in Transfiguration, but she’d assumed that the girl was burnt out from her intense studying and needed a rest.

“Are you sure of your information?”

“It was another Gryffindor who told us, Professor,” Nott spoke up, his voice so polished and cold that Minerva couldn’t help staring at him. Nott didn’t look as though he noticed, which meant he probably had. “Neville Longbottom.”

Minerva pursed her lips. She’d never known Mr. Longbottom to lie—honestly, he was too timid for it—and she had noticed that Mr. Weasley had a temper and seemed caught somewhere between irritation at and jealousy of Miss Granger.

“I suppose that it won’t do you any harm to speak to her,” she said. “But do come down for the Halloween Feast as soon as you can.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Minerva stood aside and watched them troop past her. Mr. Malfoy was staring at his feet for some reason, and Harry seemed entirely focused on the task of finding Miss Granger, but Mr. Nott and Mr. Zabini twisted their heads to watch her until they went around a corner.

Minerva shook her head. She wanted to believe this was completely innocent, but she hadn’t known an actual friendship between Gryffindors and Slytherins for decades. Ones based on mutual dislike of someone else, yes, and ones that could be mutually advantageous, but even those tended to break down eventually along the lines of House politics or Quidditch rivalries.

Maybe Harry will be different. I hope so.

*

“Hermione?”

Hermione curled harder into a ball. It made sense that someone would have come looking for her, because she had missed class, and the guilt of that scraped at her. But not harder than Ron Weasley’s words scraped at her.

Gryffindor is supposed to be the House of the brave. The Hat said I would make friends here. Why haven’t I? What’s wrong with me?

“Hermione!”

The voice was close enough now that Hermione could identify it as Harry’s. She winced. She enjoyed talking to Harry about politics and the way that some people should really do something about reforming the magical world, but what if he secretly despised her, too? What if he had just come to laugh at her?

“Go a-away!” she called out, humiliated when her voice broke in the middle.

“No.”

The door of the bathroom opened, and Hermione winced and ducked her head. Then she remembered that she was inside one of the stalls and couldn’t be seen. She kept quiet, hoping they would leave.

But the door opened, and Harry stood there, looking at her. Hermione could see a few more people standing behind him, and squeezed her eyes shut.

So much for being a brave Gryffindor.

“Are you going to come out? I know what happened, but you should remember that Weasley is a waste of air, as far as I can tell.”

“And magic,” added someone from behind Harry. Hermione thought he sounded like Blaise Zabini from his voice. “Don’t forget about magic.”

“Weasleys in general should go away,” muttered someone who sounded like Malfoy. At least, the voice did. Hermione wrinkled her brow. She couldn’t remember ever hearing him sound so subdued.

“I quite agree.”

There were four people here? It would have been really nice if Hermione had had four friends who would come looking for her, but as it was, she knew these were just people Harry had dragged along.

More people to witness her cowardice.

Face burning, she jumped up and edged out of the stall. “I’m fine, really,” she said, talking fast. It had sometimes worked in Muggle primary to get people to go away or at least stop talking to her. “Thanks for coming to get me. I promise that I’m going to go down to the Halloween feast as soon as possible.”

“Are you really?”

Harry sounded as if he doubted her. Hermione put her head up and nodded very fast. That sometimes worked, too. “I promise.”

“You missed class. He must have really upset you.”

Hermione hadn’t intended to cry in front of them, but she could feel tears starting to slip down her cheeks. “Everyone hates me and I don’t know why!” she cried. “I just want to get along with people and study magic! But some people hate me for my blood, and some people hate me for doing well in class, and some people hate me when I offer them help but also get upset that I won’t let them copy my homework! I don’t understand!”

“I do.”

Harry’s words jerked Hermione to a stop. In retrospect, that was probably a good thing, she thought, sniffling a little as she pulled a handkerchief from her robe pocket to wipe her nose. “What do you mean?”

“People also hate me because of something I can’t help.” Harry held up his arm with the snake wrapped around it. Salash was watching Hermione with her bright eyes. “Or they love me for the same reason. Their reasons make sense to them, and individually it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s terrible when their reasons pile on top of each other.”

“Yes,” Hermione whispered, “it is.”

Harry nodded. “So I can’t promise that no one will ever hate you for stupid reasons again.” Behind Harry, Malfoy looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. “But I can promise that you’re not the only one who’s hated that way, and I’m going to do my best to make people apologize and think better of it when they hurt you.”

Hermione swallowed. “Really?” she said in a tiny voice that she didn’t think would be as tiny as it was.

“Yes. I promise.”

There was something about hearing Harry say it in that tone that reassured Hermione, even though she’d never heard him promise anything like that before. She nodded and bit her lip. “Okay. Can we go to the feast?”

“Sure. And you can come sit at the Slytherin table so you don’t have to sit at the same table as Ron Weasley.”

“Harry.”

That was Nott’s voice. Hermione only knew for sure because she was more likely to recognize the voices of the others, though. Nott rarely spoke up in class, and she’d never spent time around him otherwise.

“Yes, Theo?”

“Is that the wisest thing?”

“Why?”

“You know what some of them will say about her.”

Hermione shrank back, her arms wrapped around her chest. That was right. There were Slytherins who were fine, like Harry, and ones who hated her for her blood. For having Muggle parents.

As though children chose their parents!

“They can say it,” Harry said evenly. “And then I’ll make sure that they’re sorry for saying it.”

“You’d threaten them?” Hermione blurted, stunned and a little awed. She hadn’t thought Harry was that kind of person.

“I’d do something worse than threaten them.”

Hermione couldn’t imagine what that would be, and she saw some pretty doubtful looks on the faces of the Slytherins standing behind Harry, too. But she discovered that she trusted him. And she really couldn’t face Ron Weasley right now.

“All right,” she said.

*

Harry ignored the way that Theo and Blaise and Draco all muttered at his back as they walked down the stairs. Well, not Draco. Draco had been pretty quiet the last few days, even though he’d acted as if he still wanted to be Harry’s friend by following him around.

But until he apologized, Harry wouldn’t consider him a real friend.

They were most of the way down the staircase that led to the Great Hall when Salash hissed and lifted her head from his arm. Harry looked down at her, frowning. Salash hadn’t actually spoken when she’d done that, just made an angry sound.

“What is it?”

Hermione flinched beside him, and Harry was sorry for that, but it seemed like Salash was really alarmed. He didn’t have time to apologize for being a Parselmouth right now.

“I can smell something terrible and stinky.” Salash’s tongue flicked in and out again. “And I can feel the vibrations through the floor. Something large is coming this way.”

Harry turned around to his friends and Draco. “We need to run,” he said. “Salash said that something large and foul-smelling is coming this way. She can feel the vibrations in the floor and smell the scent on the air.”

“So can we,” Theo said.

His voice was strained. Harry glanced at him and wondered if having a strong sense of smell was part of lamia heritage or something.

And then he realized what Theo meant, because the terrible reek was flooding up the corridor, and the heavy footsteps were audible now.

“Run!”

All of them took off running. Harry pushed past them and got to the front of the line, trying to steer them towards one of the staircases that would land in a secret passage. Otherwise, he thought everyone would break off and run in different directions, and the monster, whatever it was, could catch them.

I don’t want any of my friends to die!

“It’s a troll.”

Blaise’s voice was hushed with awe. At least he was still running after Harry and didn’t sound like he would go back to try and make friends with the troll. Harry careened around a corner and looked back over his shoulder for a second.

Yes, it was a huge troll, with a club over its shoulder and small eyes, plodding towards them. The slow pace might not have been a problem, but it was covering huge portions of the floor with every stride.

“Run!”

Hermione was crying with fear, but Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her along. Salash was coiling around Harry’s arm tightly enough that his wrist was going numb, but at least that meant Harry could feel her. And he could hear the other three sets of footsteps, besides his and Hermione’s, still pounding along behind them.

They reached the bottom of the staircase Harry was thinking of, and he went up without hesitation. All they would have to do was reach the secret passage, and they could duck in, and even if the troll hit the wall with his club and knocked some of the stone off, they would be long gone.

But then the staircase swung.

Harry gripped the bannisters grimly as he heard people shrieking behind him. Hermione screamed right into his ear, which was unpleasant, but at least she didn’t fall off. And Salash hissed urgently, “We have to turn and fight!”

That was always Salash’s preference, Harry reflected, but he thought it was because she’d never been in a real fight before. Dudley hadn’t fought him after Harry had come back to Privet Drive wearing Salash. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what we can do to fight him.”

“Harry! Harry, do something!”

Blaise and Hermione shrieked that at the same time, and then gaped at each other. Harry shook his head a little as he turned back. One of the things he disliked the most about his “Boy-Who-Lived” status was that people always wanted him to handle problems.

But in this case, he might have an idea. Or at least Salash seemed to have an idea.

“Join with me. Make me bigger!”

Harry swallowed and reached out towards her. He didn’t know exactly how he was doing it, but then, he didn’t know exactly how he’d grown green scales on his arms when Theo talked to him about the lamia, either. There was a direction that sort of existed when he spoke Parseltongue, and he didn’t pay attention to it most of the time, but he was paying attention to it now, and—

He reached.

Salash abruptly turned into a huge, monstrous snake, so big that Harry couldn’t support her on his arm and sat down very hard on the floor. Salash slithered away from him, hissing, ignoring the way that Theo and Draco scrambled away from her. Draco’s mouth was open with awe and not a little fear, Harry thought. Theo looked stunned.

Salash slithered directly at the troll, still hissing. Harry scrambled to his feet and started to run after her.

Someone grabbed him. Harry thought it was Theo, but he didn’t really care. He wasn’t going to let his friend go into a fight with a troll on her own! He stomped and kicked backwards, and whoever it was let him go with a pained cry.

Harry ran after Salash, who was hissing at the troll, “Hey, stupid, pick on someone your own size!”

*

Theo pulled his stinging hand back and rubbed it in silence. He wished he’d never made a noise in the first place. He wished he’d just let the stupid, stubborn Harry Potter, a green-scaled lamia who wanted to die in a stupid fight with a stupid troll, go.

He watched in continued silence as Salash wrapped around the troll’s legs. The troll seemed stunned at her appearance and didn’t move, but when she actually started to constrict around him, he roared and raised his club.

Theo watched. Why should he do more? Clearly, his help wasn’t wanted.

“Let him go, Salash!”

She did at the same time as the troll swung his club. He promptly overbalanced and crashed to the floor. Salash swarmed on top of him, hissing, the golden glittering length of her at least ten times what it had been before.

“I didn’t know she could grow like that.”

That was Granger, Theo ignored her to watch the fight. Blaise was muttering something about how he hadn’t known that about Salash, either, and Draco was squeaking in fear And Harry was in the fight.

Theo didn’t understand. Lamia were supposed to preserve themselves first, above all else, to make sure the blood and gifts of the Ancestors didn’t dim or fail. They had a sacred trust. He had thought Harry understood that with the way that he acted, measured and calm, even in the face of Draco saying things like “Mudblood.”

Maybe he doesn’t.

Theo breathed out slowly as he watched Salash wrap around the troll’s throat, narrating what she was doing all the while and telling the ugly thing to die, and Harry stood right beside her cheering her on. He forgot, sometimes, that Harry had grown up in the Muggle world. He seemed to accept the reality of Parseltongue and magic so easily.

But maybe Theo needed to spend more time instructing him. More time telling Harry the truth of what it was like to be a lamia, and that he had people waiting for him who would embrace him and lift him up.

Because as annoying as Harry could be sometimes, as worried as Theo was about what his growing green scales meant, he didn’t want Harry to die.

*

Lord Voldemort hissed in irritation as he felt the spell that he had cast to monitor the troll’s life signs dim. No one should have been able to destroy it so easily. He had deliberately released it a little before the feast so that there would still be students in the halls wandering around and distracting the professors, and so that the professors would be rounding up the students instead of tracking the beast down.

But now it was dead.

Lord Voldemort turned Quirinus’s body away from the third-floor corridor, where he had planned to get the Stone quickly during the chaos, and headed swiftly downwards. The spell that monitored the life signs was definitely humming from that direction, but his imprisonment behind Quirinus’s skin and bone did make it more difficult to detect.

The staircases for once cooperated, and Lord Voldemort managed to slow before he came around the actual corner to the place where the troll had apparently died. He peered carefully around it.

A cluster of students stood near the top of the staircase. Another one stood near the dead body of the troll at the bottom, with Minerva and Severus near him. Lord Voldemort sneered. Severus was no longer loyal, at least in the sense that Lord Voldemort suspected he wanted the Stone for himself.

Then he saw what else was near the troll, and hissed aloud.

An enormous snake.

It shared the colors but of course not the size of the one that Potter so constantly carried around on his arm, attempting to brag to the world that he was stronger than he actually was. Lord Voldemort tapped his fingers on the wall. Had Minerva Transfigured the creature? He had thought she was further away from the troll than that.

He decided that he would have to reveal himself if he wanted answers. He steered Quirinius into the open and down the stairs.

“–never saw such recklessness in my life!” Minerva was shouting.

She apparently did not Transfigure it.

Lord Voldemort refused to believe that one of the children could have done so, however. Even accidental magic would have had trouble making a snake that large, and doing it without damage to the snake. It was much more likely that they would have blown the creature up like a balloon than simply enlarged her.

“I had to stop the troll, Professor.”

“You did not,” Severus hissed at Potter. His eyes were wild, Lord Voldemort saw as he came closer. Lord Voldemort concealed a sigh. He missed the Severus who used to get upset about Muggles still having limbs and consciousness, as opposed to the one honestly worried about a child. “You could have come and got one of us!”

“I didn’t know where you were, sir. And the troll was right behind us.”

“You still should have run!”

“We were.”

Lord Voldemort decided that the only way to get information was to inject himself into the intolerably stupid argument. “D-did you really bring down a mountain troll all by yourself, Mr. P-Potter?” he asked in Quirinus’s whiny voice. “Well done!”

“Thanks, sir.”

Still no information on how. The snake had slithered back and coiled around the boy, hissing softly at Lord Voldemort, although without words. Lord Voldemort pushed on. “And you managed to Transfigure the snake? Or did Professor McGonagall do that?” He managed to give Minerva an impressed glance.

She sniffed. Lord Voldemort entertained images of forcing her into her Animagus shape and dropping her down a well.

“I certainly didn’t do this,” the hag snapped. “And I wouldn’t dream of teaching first-year students this kind of advanced Transfiguration! Mr. Potter did it, but he refuses to say how.”

“I told you, professor. Salash wanted to fight, and she told me that I could make her bigger, and I did.”

“That is not an explanation, Mr. Potter!”

“It’s the only one I have.”

Lord Voldemort intervened again. Was he the only one with common sense in the school? “What exactly did you do, Mr. Potter?”

“Salash wanted me to make her bigger. And I did.”

Lord Voldemort wistfully pictured his hands on the brat’s throat, then shoved the image away. It would be Quirinius’s hands now in any case, which would not be satisfying. “And there was nothing special you did? It was pure accidental magic?”

He supposed that it might have been. Just because accidental magic usually produced unforeseen results did not mean that that always happened.

“I seemed to sort of—reach in a different direction, sir. The way that I do when I speak Parseltongue to her. It’s not like speaking English or translating English. It’s like deliberately jumping in a different direction.”

“That is n-not clear, Mr. P-Potter!”

“It’s what I have. Sir.”

Lord Voldemort glared at the child before him and reflected that it was a shame he was bound to this body. He would teach the brat respect if he were not. Oh, yes, he would.

Well, the boy would still suffer before he died. That was one thing Lord Voldemort did not intend to compromise on, no matter what foolish drama he had to play out while trapped in Quirinus’s body.

For now, he gave Potter a vague smile and turned to look at the troll, shuddering a little. “My g-goodness!” he said, allowing Quirinus to rise to the fore. “I don’t know that I c-could have taken down a c-creature that large, even in my p-prime…”

While his insufferable host rambled on, Lord Voldemort listened to the hissed conversation between Potter and his snake. It seemed he wanted her to return to normal size and she didn’t want to, in case there were more threats.

The greatest one to either of you is right here, you stupid creature.

But in the end, the snake shrank and wrapped around Potter’s wrist again. Potter stood, his eyes darting back and forth between the professors as if he suspected one of them of releasing the troll.

None of them could have thought of this. None of them could have weakened the wards to bring in the troll.

This child is my nemesis? It will be easy to destroy him.

*

Blaise stared at the troll from behind Granger’s shoulders and fought not to shake.

Yes, he was fond of magical creatures, but he preferred the ones that had an animal form, thank you very much.

He looked at Harry, who was looking at Snape and McGonagall with an iron face and maybe an iron heart. Blaise could understand that, sort of. Both professors had torn straight into Harry for being “reckless” while facing the troll, even though he had only done it because the professors were nowhere to be found.

Neither of them had expressed shock and dismay about the troll’s presence in the first place. Which made Blaise wonder if they had known about it ahead of time.

For now, he had no proof. But he would watch, and wait, and move if Harry needed him.

*

Hermione clasped her hands together as she watched Harry. She knew that she probably had stars in her eyes, but it was hard to regret them.

When she had first come to Hogwarts and seen Harry Potter Sorted into Slytherin, she had been startled and a bit afraid. Then she’d been more afraid when she’d heard about how Parselmouths tended to be blood purists. But he’d been pretty quiet and friendly and even talked to her about politics that any reasonable person would find abhorrent.

And now he’d done something that was more heroic than all those silly storybooks about him (that Hermione had of course read, because they were books, but she knew fiction when she saw it).

He’s not what they say. He’s better.

*

Draco wanted to hang his head. He didn’t, because no one was looking at him at the moment and the impact would be lost.

But he wanted to. He’d been wrong.

Harry being the son of a Muggleborn woman meant nothing, not if he could use his accidental magic on purpose, without a wand. And he had done it to save a Muggleborn who, Draco had to grudgingly admit, got most spells in most classes before he did. The only class Draco did consistently better in was Potions.

Maybe Mother had been right about all of Father’s ideas being foolish, not just the majority of them.

These weren’t the actions or the worth of weak people.

*

Theo’s eyes went slowly back and forth from Harry, to the troll, to Salash as she shrank back to normal size. He was thinking about how hard Harry had tried to grow the green scales from his arms and how he’d known nothing about lamia heritage before Theo told him, which meant he’d had no partial transformations when he was young.

Is he a lamia at all? Or was it just accidental magic that he can command better when it relates to snakes?

Theo would have to watch and find out.